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"An urgent and elegant book excavating the many meanings of cuddling under racial capitalism ... Lyrical and powerful" Sophie K. Rosa, author of
Radical Intimacy"Will take its place among books by Christina Sharpe, Saidiya Hartman, and Hazel Carby that investigate the violence of intimacy and the intimacy of violence" Jack Halberstam, author of
Wild ThingsRanging from the terrifying embrace of the slave ship's hold to the racist encoding of "cuddly" toys,
On Cuddling is a unique combination of essay and poetry that contends with the way racial violence is enacted through intimacy.
Informed by Black feminist and queer poetics, Phanuel Antwi focuses his lens on the suffering of Black people at the hands of state violence and racial capitalism. As radical movements grow to advance Black liberation, so too must our ways of understanding how racial capitalism embraces us all. Antwi turns to cuddling, an act we imagine as devoid of violence, and explores it as a tense transfer point of power.
Through archival documents and multiple genres of writing, it becomes clear that the racial violence of the state and economy has always been about the (mis)management of intimacies.
Phanuel Antwi is Canada Research Chair in Black Arts and Epistemologies. He is a curator, activist and associate professor at the University of British Columbia.
List of contents
Be Held
A Scroll
Scene of Subjection, Choreography of Care
Racial Embrace
Hold. Womb. Tomb. Spoon.
The Dead Can Love Us Too
Grammars of the Black Atlantic
Bearing
Attraction and Abjection
Continuous Present
State Cuddling
Loved to Death
Theater, Hustling, Embrace
It's Almost Time
Fugitive (Solidarity (Betrayals))
Acknowledgments Notes
About the author
Phanuel Antwi is Canada Research Chair in Black Arts and Epistemologies. He is an artist, teacher and organiser concerned with race, poetics, movements, intimacy and struggle. He works with text, dance, film and photography to intervene in artistic, academic and public spaces. He is a curator, activist and associate professor at the University of British Columbia.
Summary
What can a cuddle tell us about intimacy, violence and racism?
